Monthly Archives:

June 2009

From the Israel Policy Forum site (quoting Yedioth Ahronoth): Ehud Barak is going to tell George Mitchell today that Israel plans to finish building 2000 units and won’t freeze construction in East Jerusalem. Oh–and freeze only lasts for three to…

Max Blumenthal has a great piece up on Huffington pointing out that even as the cable networks and MSM endlessly reprise the video killing of Neda Agha-Soltan in Tehran, they have ignored similar cold-blooded killings during protests in the West…

The other day I was having coffee with a well-connected neighbor, and going through the litany of Palestinian suffering in the occupied territories, when she nodded impatiently and said, “What’s the answer?” Then: “Do you believe there should be a…

Ezra Nawi will be sentenced tomorrow in a Jerusalem courthouse for allegedly assaulting a police office while attempting to stop a house demolition in the occupied territories. Today, The Nation has published an aptly titled article by Nawi – “Israel’s…

We’re in a conversation aimed at forming a new political combination. Inspired by Josh Ruebner’s tragicomic effort to pierce the veil on AIPAC’s influence in Congress, Grant Smith of IRMEP talks about the real nuclear “hegemon” in the Middle East…

A couple months back at the 92d Street Y, someone on a panel said that Bernie Madoff could have happened to any community. I mocked the comment at the time because it was willful indifference (on the part of a…

Dan Sisken reports on Congresswoman Donna Edwards’s town hall meeting earlier tonight in Silver Spring, MD: For the first hour or so, Edwards talked about how she had come to get involved in Israel-Palestinian issues and take a trip to…

Claire Messud has a short story in the New York Review of Books, set in Australia and the New Hebrides. I love the South Pacific. But I wonder how long before the NYRB takes up the leftwing responsibility of running,…

The Jerusalem Post has given me a new theme: Israel’s delegitimization is reaching American culture in a whole new way. I first heard this pronouncement at AIPAC, from Howard Kohr, who gave a Shakespearean speech saying that a “Predicate for…

An OK piece in Washington Post on confiscation of Palestinian land to build Modiin Illit settlement. The piece actually mentions Bassem Abu Rahman, killed at the Bi’lin demonstration in April, and ends on a note of Israeli intransigence–the new paradigm….

Before going to Cairo last month, I made it a point to seek out Ashraf Khalil, whose journalism on the conflict in the LA Times earned him a wide reputation for fairness. A man of large spirit, Khalil (left) introduced…

We give a lot of attention to the weekly nonviolent protests in the village of Bil’in as they are an inspiring example of popular resistance in the face of Israeli repression. But the truth is that the village is under…

From the Jerusalem Post, American professors say U.S. support is eroding, and fast. Wish they were covering this over here: “The mood in the United States is changing,” said Richard Samuels, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of…

A friend writes: More on that NYT piece about settlements. Here’s my favorite part, lede: “JERUSALEM — Israel would be open to a complete freeze of settlement building in the West Bank for three to six months …” 3rd graf:…

Ira Glunts writes: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak will meet with George Mitchell on Tuesday to present an Israeli compromise to the U.S. demand that all settlement expansion cease. It has been in the Israeli press for a few days….

Two friends have pointed me to the New York Times’ story today on the Netanyahu government’s apparent willingness to cut a deal regarding settlements. The story is remarkable for its utter immersion in the Israeli discourse. “Where are the critical…

Rob Browne writes: I just saw this article by Amira Hass in Haaretz on a private Israeli security firm that is running a checkpoint and is implementing more severe restrictions on food that can be brought into Israel than the…

Anees of Jerusalem writes: Yesterday Naomi Klein gave a great talk at the Friends School in Ramallah. It was a short addendum to her January piece in The Nation supporting the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement against Israel. I…

Remember when people wanted to lynch the late Edward Said, English professor at Columbia, for throwing a symbolic stone toward Israeli forces from Lebanon in 2000? Well today my old friend and mentor Lucianne Goldberg: published this image of an…

This photo of Ezra Nawi, the Israeli human-rights activist, appears at Jesse Hochheiser’s blog here. What a beautiful man. He’s about to be sentenced this week for trying to stop a house demolition in the West Bank two years ago….

Do you sense that anti-Zionism is being normalized? I do. I hear the word and more more frequently these days, in a neutral manner. It’s been separated at last from the smear, that it is anti-semitic, thru the refusal of…

Yesterday Assaf Oron expressed skepticism about reports that Israel has eased movement in the West Bank by lifting checkpoints. Today Oron offers “some additional information confirming my suspicions, from Micheala, a Machsom-Watch activist (translated from Hebrew)”: In general the situation…

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